11 ideas
6222 | If a decision is in accord with right reason, everyone can agree with it [Cumberland] |
Full Idea: No decision can be in accord with right reason unless all can agree on it. | |
From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.V.XLVI) | |
A reaction: Personally I think anyone who disagrees with this should get out of philosophy (and into sociology, fantasy fiction, ironic game-playing, crime…). Of course 'can' agree is not the same as 'will' agree. You must have faith that good reasons are persuasive. |
16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined. |
16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic. |
16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B) | |
A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism. |
16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11) | |
A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream. |
6217 | Natural law is supplied to the human mind by reality and human nature [Cumberland] |
Full Idea: Some truths of natural law, concerning guides to moral good and evil, and duties not laid down by civil law and government, are necessarily supplied ot the human mind by the nature of things and of men. | |
From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.I.I) | |
A reaction: I agree that some moral truths have the power of self-evidence. If you say they are built into the mind, we now ask what did the building, and evolution is the only answer, and hence we distance ourselves from the truths, seeing them as strategies. |
6221 | If there are different ultimate goods, there will be conflicting good actions, which is impossible [Cumberland] |
Full Idea: If there be posited different ultimate ends, whose causes are opposed to each other, then there will be truly good actions likewise opposed to each other, which is impossible. | |
From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.V.XVI) | |
A reaction: A very interesting argument for there being one good rather than many, and an argument which I don't recall in any surviving Greek text. A response might be to distinguish between what is 'right' and what is 'good'. See David Ross. |
6218 | The happiness of individuals is linked to the happiness of everyone (which is individuals taken together) [Cumberland] |
Full Idea: The happiness of each person cannot be separated from the happiness of all, because the whole is no different from the parts taken together. | |
From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.I.VI) | |
A reaction: Sounds suspiciously like the fallacy of composition (Idea 6219). An objection to utilitarianism is its assumption that a group of people have a 'total happiness' that is different from their individual states. Still, Cumberland is on to utilitarianism. |
6220 | The happiness of all contains the happiness of each, and promotes it [Cumberland] |
Full Idea: The common happiness of all contains the greatest happiness for each, and most effectively promotes it. …There is no path leading anyone to his own happiness, other than the path which leads all to the common happiness. | |
From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.I.VI) | |
A reaction: I take this as a revolutionary idea, which leads to utilitarianism. It is doing what seemed to the Greeks unthinkable, which is combining hedonism with altruism. There is no proof for it, but it is a wonderful clarion call for building a civil society. |
7492 | Early societies are based on community, and modern societies on association [Tönnies, by Watson] |
Full Idea: Pre-modern societies are based on community (Gemeinschaft), whereas modern societies are based on association (Gesellschaft). | |
From: report of Ferdinand Tönnies (Community and Association [1887]) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.32 | |
A reaction: A very interesting distinction. The modern term implies contracts, and it strikes me as an extremely accurate description of modern liberal democracies. There is very little sense of community, but a strong sense of innumerable contracts that bind us. |
6216 | Natural law is immutable truth giving moral truths and duties independent of society [Cumberland] |
Full Idea: Natural law is certain propositions of immutable truth, which guide voluntary actions about the choice of good and avoidance of evil, and which impose an obligation to act, even without regard to civil laws, and ignoring compacts of governments. | |
From: Richard Cumberland (De Legibus Naturae [1672], Ch.I.I) | |
A reaction: Not a popular view, but I am sympathetic. If you are in a foreign country and find a person lying in pain, there is a terrible moral deficiency in anyone who just ignores such a thing. No legislation can take away a person's right of self-defence. |